The Moonstone Starlet

Chapter 9

When Jonathan woke up the next morning and looked over at Kane’s bed, he saw a large blanket lump at the top of the bed completely covering the two inhabitants. Whispers and quiet giggles were coming from underneath. Toews’ jaw tightened. He jumped out of bed, walked over, and ripped the blankets back.

“What the Hell Jonathan!” Patrick yelled.
“Seriously Toews, what if we were trying to get it on or something,”
“Well what the fuck are you guys doing?” He said, looking down at them.

They were partially sitting up holding a book between them and using a cell phone as a flashlight.

“What is this?”

He grabbed the book from them.

“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets?”
“Thanks for losing our page asshole,” Patrick muttered as Jonathan handed them back the book.
“Seriously, you guys were just reading some stupid kid’s book?”
“There is more to life than hockey Jon, I myself enjoy fine literature,” Patrick replied.
“I have never seen you read a book before,”
“Ok let’s quit the arguing!” Elia yelled.

They were all quiet for a moment. Jonathan spoke first, “Kaner do you want to go with me to see what kind of fruit they have at the breakfast bar?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Patrick said as he got out of bed. Jonathan walked over to his phone at the night stand.
“Damn it I thought I plugged this in last night to charge…” He plugged it in and set it on the nightstand. Elia watched as Jonny walked to the door to put his shoes on.
“Will you bring me back a muffin or something?”
“Yeah,”

And then they were gone.

She waited a minute to make sure they weren't coming back then jumped up. She quickly texted Sharpie and grabbed her shoes. "Where the F are my pants?" She yelled as she ran around looking for her pants. They weren't under the bed, they weren't in the bathroom or on the floor. Time was passing fast so Elia made a desperate choice. She ran to the door, looked both ways, and not seeing anyone decided to make a run for it. Down the hall and to the right she sprinted, phone in hand, until she reached Sharp's room. She knocked on the door, looking back over her shoulder. Sharp opened opened the door and she ran in. Halfway into the room she realized Adam was there. She held the phone behind her back.

"Elia, what are you doing here?...with no pants on...?"

"I...really had to see you," of course, Adam was Sharps roommate on the road, she should have remembered that. Seabrooke always roomed with Duncan, they must have had the attached room.

"Yeah, I woke up and just wanted to see you,"
"Patrick, can you get out of here?" Adam asked.

Elia turned to look at Sharp, waving the phone behind her back. He grabbed it as he walked across the room into the shared bathroom and disappeared.

Adam was sitting up in bed wearing boxer briefs watching tv. Elia had seen all the guys in the locker room at one time or another, but never really looked at them. Now she was staring. Burish wasn’t a lean muscular, he was thick. His broad frame was wrapped in muscle, from his shoulders down to his waist.

"So you came here to see me in heels with no pants on? I can't help but wonder why," he said grinning.

"I..."

She took her shoes off and picked them up, hoping that would cut down on the sexyness. Adam carefully turned on to the side of the bed and stood up.

“I’m almost to the point of not needing crutches at all,” he said as he slowly walked over. Elia tried to come up with something to say but improv was never her strong suit. Especially under this kind of tension. He put his hands on hips and pulled her into him. She could feel every part of his body pressed up against her. He looked down at her, smiling, “I know some ways you could help me with my knee flexion exercises,”.

“Burish, hold on a second,” she said pushing him back a couple inches, “That’s not why I came here...That is...You can’t just put your hands on me like that Adam.”
“Why not? There is something between us, I know you feel it too,”
“Yeah? And how many other girls do you feel that with every week?”
“None, just you!”
She gave him a look of insulted disbelief.
“I’m serious El, I’m not interested in other girls, just you,”
“That is such a load of bullshit Adam.”
“What do I have to do to prove to you that I could be the guy for you,”

“I don’t know. Maybe go even a month without touching another woman?”
“Done.”
“Wait, what?”

Sharp and Seabrook came through the door back into the room.

“I will not touch another woman for a month, and if I do, you will go on a date with me.”

Seabrook and Sharp looked back and forth between them trying to figure out what was going on.

“You shouldn’t have left them alone in here, she doesn’t even have pants on,” Seabrook said.
“Yeah, El, you better leave.” Sharpie said, walking behind her and passing the phone off.
“You’re right, I was just leaving,” Elia said, starting to leave.
“El, do we have a deal?” Adam asked.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. Her mind was reeling. She stepped out of the room and started walking down the hallway.

Just then Quennville turned the corner. At first she thought he might not notice she was wearing little clothing. She avoided eye contact and tried to walk past. She could picture his frown already.

"Elia Downs."
"Crap."

The lecture was short but painful. Ladies don't walk around in public with no pants on. Hadn't she been listening when he warned her about Burish and the guys? If she didn't respect herself the guys wouldn't respect her either. Respectable women don't walk around in neglige. Hearing Quennville say neglige may have been the worst part. He shook his head as he walked away. Elia waited until she got around the corner before she started to run. She had just finished plugging Jonathan's phone in when the boys got back. Toews had a bunch of fruit and yogurt to make one of his gross protein smoothies. Patrick handed Elia a muffin.

"Actually I have to get going, I have a brunch thing, just remembered. But have either of you seen my pants?"
"I hung them up in the closet."

Of course Jonny would put them where they were supposed to be. Elia heard Quennville’s voice in her head, "a young lady shouldn't throw her clothes on the floor."

She grabbed her pants out of the closet, and the shirt she forgot about and started to get dressed. Jonathan tried to hold back laughter as he watched her shimmy around trying to pull her pants on. "You guys have it so easy with your relaxed fit! Fuck you!" She yelled as she almost fell over, laughing too.
"Uhgh laughing doesn't help,"

She finally got her pants on and left to find her own room. It was getting to be late morning so she didn't have time to shower. She grabbed a pair of jeans, underwear and a tank top out of her suitcase and changed. Quickly she washed her face and put her hair up in a bun. She grabbed her phone, wallet, raybans, rental keys and was out the door. A few rooms down in the hotel she banged on the door.

“Intern!” she yelled.
A sleepy looking nineteen year old opened the door.
“The fuck are you so tired for? Why weren’t you at the Mario Kart tournament last night?”
He muttered an apology and grabbed his camera.

Their hotel was across from Jobing.com arena, in a complex of restaurants, shops and a giant parking lot. She was heading all the way across Phoenix to meet up with a Coyotes player at a local brunch spot named Crudo. Traffic in Phoenix was a bitch. Elia combated this problem by driving in the carpool lane the entire time they were on the highway. They pulled up to a small strip mall, which made Elia nervous.
“This whole city is like a suburb, what is this,” She grumbled. They walked around to the back of the stip mall to find the entrance. Once inside it looked legit. The ceiling was open, exposing the support beams and lighting conduits. The floors were glossed concrete and the tables were solid wood. She was shown to the table where he was already seated. He stood up when he saw her. He was over six feet tall, tan, with dark hair and brown eyes.

“Elia Downs,” she said as she shook his hand.
“Paul Bissonnette, great to meet you.”
“This is my intern, you can call him Intern. So how’s it going?”
“Great, I gotta say, I am surprised to be meeting you right now. How did I land this gig?”
“I posted a question on my blog last week letting Coyotes fans know I would be in AZ, and who did they want me to interview.”
“They picked me?”
She laughed, “Actually the person who got the most votes was Ilya Bryzgalov, but he didn’t return my phone calls.”
“Ha, I’m used to that. We can’t get the guy we want, I guess we’ll take you,”

They ordered food and chatted. Elia ordered a pork belly poutine and Paul ordered Tuscan baked eggs with tomatoes. Paul was a pretty cool guy, and Elia found him easy to talk to. He had a searing sense of humor. They quickly bonded over tattoos and their mutual sympathy for Alex Rodriguez. He was a great interview because he didn’t give bullshit answers. Everything the said he obviously meant. She was impressed to learn his daily routine and how much he worked to earn a spot in the NHL. They talked about the state of hockey in the desert and the culture of hockey in general. Towards the end of brunch, Elia asked how he had become such a popular figure in the Coyotes organization without having much ice time. The topic turned to twitter. As soon as Paul found out Elia didn’t even have a smartphone, he demanded they go to the Sprint store immediately.

Together with the help of the phone store employee they picked out an HTC Hero. At first Elia was very disturbed to spend three hundred dollars on a cell phone. Paul insisted that Elia would use it a million times more than her nearly two hundred thousand dollar Maserati. Once it was activated Paul set up a Twitter for her. He took his phone out and motioned for her to step closer. They took a picture and he tweeted it, “#ff my friend @ELdowns.” Then he took her phone and typed something out.

“There, now you’ve got your first tweet.”
Elia read what came across the feed on her phone. “‘DM me your dick pics’...Damn it Biz, what does DM mean?!”
He laughed hysterically.
“That was not funny. If I get any dick pics I’m sending them to you.”

He told her he would love to hang out more but he did have practice to get to. They hugged goodbye and went their separate ways. By the time Elia got back to the hotel she had over four hundred thousand followers. She really didn’t know what to do with it, so she took a picture of Jobing.com Arena and tweeted, “hey watch the #blackhawks play tonight at 8c.” The guys had a morning skate while she was gone, and were mostly in their rooms showering. Elia sat in her own room and did some work on the computer. She needed two condos along the river as shooting locations for the summer. Trump Tower was an obvious choice, and she planned on checking out Kane’s condo when they got back to town.

In the mid afternoon before the game the team met in a banquet hall for a specially prepared meal program the players were asked to abide by. A lot of fruit and healthy proteins. Elia was planning to skip it and grab food elsewhere, preferably somewhere with wine, but Seabrook had stopped by her room and told her to come. She picked up some salmon and kale from the buffet table and sat down next to Antti. Seabrook sat towards the middle of the table. Toews was sitting at the other end of the table with Hossa and Kane. Sharp was standing conspicuously by the fruit. She watched as Jonny pulled his phone out of his pocket. Although she couldn’t tell what he was doing, his reaction was very strange. At first, all the color drained from his face. Then he put his hand on his head as if in disbelief. Finally he got up from the table and left the room without saying a word. The whole time Sharp was texting someone on his phone and watching Toews with a grin. Seabs was holding in a laugh. Duncan’s facial expression never changed. That guy never gave away anything. Sharp walked over to where Elia was sitting and showed her his phone, laughing. Seabs and Duncan joined them.

Her mouth dropped as she read the tweets.

“What have you done!” She exclaimed.
“We changed the contact in Jonny’s phone so it looks like that girls he’s dating is texting him this.”
All the texts from Sharp’s phone were about finding out she was pregnant. No wonder Jonathan had looked petrified. What a horrible prank to pull on someone, she thought. She hoped Sharp and Seabs never planned to pull a prank on her if that was the level of their game. It was really funny, so even though she was shaking her head she was still laughing. When Sharp started to get an incoming call from Jonathan he panicked. He couldn’t answer it, but he couldn’t let it go to his voicemail either. He answered and hung up right away.

Elia got a text.
“Hey, can we talk? I need some advice,” from Jonathan.
“Damn it why me!” She yelled.

The guys didn’t understand what the big problem was, since she was an actress. Elia tried to explain that she was very good at lying, but that it made her feel guilty and she always ended up telling the truth. Brent, always the optimist, suggested that maybe he wanted to talk to her about something else. There was zero chance of that.

When Elia and Jonathan met up she didn’t even give him a chance to speak, instead immediately confessed that she had been involved in a malicious plot to steal his phone. She insisted that she had no idea what the end result was, but Toews was too angry to listen. Later that night in the box at Jobing Arena he still refused to speak to her. She sat watching the game with Adam. It wasn’t until partway through the second period that Jonathan approached her and gave her a notebook. She looked up at him.

“I made you some homework. To see how well you are understanding the game so far and maybe get you thinking about more complex aspects of hockey.”

She opened the notebook to the first page. It listed all the cities that had hockey teams on the left side, and all the team names on the right, instructing her to match them up. She flipped to the next page. At the top were the instructions “Describe each penalty,”. Almost half the notebook was filled with questions about hockey. It must have taken a lot of time to make.

“I still don’t understand icing..” she said, looking back at the penalty page.
“I know, you’re an incredibly slow learner.”

With that he walked away and sat at the other end of the box.

Notes